


ficlet collection

by Beabaseball (beabaseball)



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Gen, One Shot Collection, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 21:25:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17030313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beabaseball/pseuds/Beabaseball
Summary: a collection of ficlets moved off of tumblr for the exodus.





	1. space opera au: tw referenced cannibalism

**Author's Note:**

> tw for referenced cannibalism

**Siphlemon asked: AU: Batfam, but IN SPACE. Your choice of scifi tech level.**

* * *

 

The station had been dead for years.

It still rotated, though. The outer ring of the station slowly turned around the center module; it had never really stopped spinning, in the vacuum of space, its orbit slow and protected from any sizable meteors because of its determined plating and the looming, dark planet that had caught it in its grip, tearing it even further off course than the original system malfunction had.

There were a lot of stories about the place. And there was protocol for being stranded in space.

From what Bruce had heard, it was up to the Captain to decide who would die last, once the rations had run out, and there was a pecking order already laid out from there. Who would be euthanized and eaten first. There were no maggots in space.

Desperate times for desperate measures.

(Human flesh didn’t taste that different from pork.)

He didn’t know if this place’s crew had been spared that last resort or not, but not for lack of trying. Information was spotty, but there weren’t any bodies or even remnants of any hypothetical ‘sole survivor,’ so it was possible, Bruce supposed, that a rescue had been mounted. Or perhaps, judging by the lack of escape pods, an escape had been attempted. Or a daring colonization? Hope for food on planet-side? At least a burial for whatever remained?

(Bones could produce a sustaining broth, and were not to be discarded.)

But the life-support system was, minus a few holes in the hull that could be patched up easily enough temporarily—and then more permanently once he had oxygen— functional.

There were even a few rooms that had been sealed shut. One had a window to it. Fungus had grown inside. Lichen. There must have been water in there before the station had gone offline. There must have been some warmth still, somehow. Could there be a corpse inside, perhaps? A  spare circuit that was still struggling to transmit electricity? A heater with the fuel cell of a champion?

The glass had been fogged when Bruce peered through. It could’ve been anything.

So curiosity would have to wait.

(As if it weren’t already going to have to wait.)

And he’d repair the life support. And just. Keep it functioning.

As it was, no one was allowed outside their suits. Alfred was safely on another station, far, far away from them gathering intelligence to smuggle them later. Nightwing and Red Robin were to go search for oxygen tanks and hazards, and anything they could use to get the radio back into the system and search for news, local transports, patrols, news of Red Hood’s location—anything of interest.

Robin was to stay with him and help monitor the system for malfunctions. As long as he could keep the boy on task rather than letting his mind wander towards untimely _improvements_ , Bruce was very, very glad that his son had picked up practical mechanics so well. It was just. Well. Sometimes you didn’t _want_ your life support system to shoot bullets or crawl along the ceiling like a spider, even if, in a compromise, the bullets were rubber.

“Father,” Damian said, looking around in disdain at the refuse of decades in abandonment. The green mask over his face was pointed outwards in an hook, a second-skin in an emergency where his lower glass encasing might’ve been damaged. It make him look bird-like. And he did always look bird-like, when he cocked his head as he did, with only his head, and the rest of his body all tense with his arms crossed.

(He jumped like a bird too at unexpected noises. Sometimes, not even loud ones. Always ready to take flight, even if he never let himself. Once, the simple, soft beeping of the ship—which Bruce had always found soothing—was enough to send Damian screaming, and into a tantrum, and he’d thrashed and snarled and looked for anything to fight until Dick had wrapped his arms around Damian and pulled him to the back of the ship, soothing him and grounding him with weight until Damian could breathe again.)

“Father,” Damian said again, more pointedly now, and Bruce realized he’d forgotten to make a sound to let Damian know he was listening.

So he made a small sound.

It didn’t carry well between the suits, but that’s what they had intercom for.

“Why are we in this trash pit?”

It was always nice when Damian actually got curious about something.

Less nice was knowing he had to actually say words in order to explain things.

Sometimes, Bruce wished they would hurry up and create a chip that would install into his brain so he could just project his thoughts and plans onto others.

Not that he’d get it. Far too many potential security breaches. Protecting his fingerprints and DNA signature had been hell enough. But he could dream.

“It’s _stu_ pid.”

Oh. Bruce still wasn’t talking.

He grunted again to let Damian know he was working on it.

“Was this another trite ‘tip’ from your idiot ‘contacts’?” Damian added more.

Oh. Hm. He seemed to be getting on a roll.

Bruce was not any good with Damian when he got on a roll. Time for a tactical retreat. Advance to the rear. Bail.

“Finish checking the wiring,” Bruce said, standing, his black suit doing at least part of the motion for him. He was getting creaky and old in his age. “I’m going to double check our seals.”

“ _Father_!”

Time to go find Dick.


	2. jason + library

**i-am-the-senate asked: jason + library? ~~**

* * *

 

It’s like that scene out of Beauty and the Beast, see? When Beast says he has a present for Belle, and he opens the doors, and he shows her this massive library full of books. 

It’s exactly like that, see, because the library wasn’t a _gift._ It’s not like Beast went out and bought all those books and put them on empty shelves _specifically_ for Belle. The books were already there. The room was already there. Hell, it was a _clean_ room, so he probably wasn’t even personally using it that much. Beast was just doing what you’re supposed to do when you have a houseguest instead of a prisoner. Right?

You show ‘em around.

…but it still felt like a gift.

Access. 

It felt like a gift, and with the look on Beast’s face, he seemed to hope it was a gift, and even if Belle didn’t know it, the Beast had been under a curse for a long time, right?  
  
He’d been like that since he was eleven years old, crammed up in a house with only the servants and dying plants and the memories of what should’ve been. 

And ~~Jason~~ Belle never had any of that sort of shit, right? She was used to being out on the streets and dealing with people and expecting nothing from them; her in her little one-room house with her parent slowly going insane and no one around to really give a fuck.  
  
And then this lonely asshole who hadn’t been a _person_ since he was eleven shows up and shows her how to access his library after being a torrential asshole. 

…and yeah.

It feels like a gift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is so short i hate posting it hhhhh


	3. jason + bruce about movies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oriignally written for the amtb universe but not exclusive to it

“Dick’s taking the rugrats downtown,” Jason said, very intentionally not looking at Bruce’s face and avoiding saying _what_ , exactly, the terrors were doing downtown. He was kind of a shit liar, as Tim so helpfully informed him several times, so the only way to make it work was to just not let anyone see his face. Which was unfortunately a pretty blatant tell, so the Hood helped out in the field—but here, in the residential part of the cave? Not exactly wearing the Hood. So Bruce probably already knew he was fudging things a little, but hopefully he was smart enough to realize if Jason was lying to him, it was for his own good.

Bruce wouldn’t _stop_ them from going, but he always got kind of twitchy when people he cared about went to the movies.

At this point he was probably already keyed in, but instead of pressing, Bruce made a dumb little grunting noise and said, “Did they say when they’d be back?”

“Uh,” Jason said. He wrinkled his forehead a bit, doing some quick mental jumping jacks to remember how long the movie might run and what time it even started, and the likelihood that Dick would try to take everyone out for ice cream at the end, plus travel time. He’d go with two and a half hours to be safe. “Probably about six thirty.”

Bruce nodded once and closed his eyes.

Agh. Why had Dick used _Jason_ as the messenger for this?

(Oh, right, because Jason got kind of twitchy in dark, loud spaces when he wasn’t allowed to fight the thing making the noise. For fuck’s sake. He hated his life. _Dickhead_ didn’t start crying when people fell from high up…)

“We’ll have the afternoon to ourselves, then,” Bruce said, snapping Jason’s attention back. It was more a statement of confirmation than a question. Jason answered it anyway.

“Yep.” Fun afternoon. Bruce wasn’t going to the office. Whatever shit Batman had going down had a starting line they weren’t quite lined up at yet. It was a weird, kind of uncomfortable thing—being in the Manor without having something to do. Just… waiting for whenever the next thing came along. It wasn’t a thing that happened very often.

“Did you have anything specific you planned to do?” Bruce asked.  
  
“Milkshakes,” Jason said immediately. Because Bruce bought the best icecream. And it was the first thing Jason thought of. Because he really wasn’t about stuttering or having an awkward silence today. Maybe he was a little nervous. It’d been a while since he’d talked with Bruce one-on-one, without one of the gremlins crawling all over the place and interrupting. Or Dick. Though Dick was a gremlin, too, in his own way. Like. The momma gremlin. “You?”

“I…” Bruce said, and seemed to actually consider his words. “Thought I might watch a movie. Would you care to join me?”

Jason blinked a bit. It took longer to process than he’d have liked, and there went his resolution to not do something stupid like that today. “…you had one in mind?”

Bruce cleared his throat. Jason turned to look at him, only to realize Bruce was also sort of only half-assed looking back. “Have you ever seen _On the Waterfront_? It, ah, it was a landmark in acting, spearheading method acting and more… specific character interpretations. It’s one of the earliest portrayal of a heavily accented, ‘average’ protagonist in American cinema. Marlon Brando. It’s set not too far from here.”

“Uh,” Jason said, because if he was gonna sound dumb, he might as well go whole-hog. At least he could actually look at Bruce, now that they were out of lying territory. Unlike Jason, Bruce didn’t look away when he lied, he’d lie to a motherfucker’s face while looking them straight in the eye. When Bruce looked away, he was being fucking _shy_ , and so there was literally nothing Jason could do now that could actually totally embarrass him more than Bruce was currently embarrassed. He’d have to get footage of this from the security cameras, later. “Cool. You gonna tell me what it’s actually about, though?”

“Ah,” said Bruce. “…an ex-prize fighter longshoreman standing up to corrupt union bosses that have formed their own mob.”

Jason laughed. A single harsh bark. “I really should’ve guessed that.”

The corner’s of Bruce’s mouth might’ve twitched. “We can always watch _Rashomon_ instead.”

“What’s _that_ one?”

“A brutal crime is committed in the forest and discovered by a woodsman. Three days later, several different versions of the story are compared. You have to try and extrapolate the true events by what was and wasn’t said, and the credibility of all the storytellers.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

**Author's Note:**

> i needed somewhere to throw the batman shit i have on tumblr before The Purge and i hate writing short oneshots so this terrible collection is what it's gonna be


End file.
